Microsoft Accidentally Bans Its Own License From App Store?

from the nicely-done dept

It's always amusing when companies make some sort of blanket statement or policy... only to realize they did it so broadly as to go against their own interests. Then you watch them backtrack. Microsoft got itself in some hot water lately, when some people realized that the rules for Microsoft's phone app store appeared to ban certain types of open source software. The specific claim was that it said certain types of licenses were to be excluded. Among the excluded:

"Excluded License" means any license requiring, as a condition of use, modification and/or distribution of the software subject to the license, that the software or other software combined and/or distributed with it be (i) disclosed or distributed in source code form; (ii) licensed for the purpose of making derivative works; or (iii) redistributable at no charge.

The only problem? This appears to cover a few of Microsoft's own licenses. As Simon Phipps points out, both Microsoft's Reciprocal License and its Public License appear to violate those terms.

Upon realizing this, Microsoft is sorta trying to backtrack on this, saying that it is reconsidering the policy, but it had, in fact, done this on purpose. Still, it's apparently open to reviewing different open source licenses, meaning that it's likely trying to figure out a way to carve out rules that allow its own licenses, but still forbid GPL software. Whether you're a GPL supporter or not (and let's avoid a "holy war" discussion), this does seem a little petty.

Of course, in this rush to "app store-ify" everything, with various gatekeepers and restrictions, sooner or later people are going to remember that they can simply avoid all of this by building web apps instead.

Filed Under: licenses, open source
Companies: microsoft